iTunes vs Indie record stores

Many of the worlds biggest artists are trying to get people back into independent record stores. Music is becoming more and more disposable these days, thanks to faster Internet speeds and cheaper downloads. With just a click of a mouse you can now buy any album - new or old - anywhere, anytime, without even having to leave the comfort of your bedroom. But whatever happened to walking into an independent record store, on a chilled saturday afternoon, and spending mind-numbing hours flicking through CD’s and Vinyl's.

We’re much more likely to stumble across new artists by looking through vinyl’s, because let’s be honest they’re far more exciting and colourful than anything on a computer screen.

Jason England

I am the Founder and Editor-in-chief of New Rising Media. You can follow me on Twitter @MrJasonEngland.

I’m faced with a choice… Which music streaming service is the one for me – Spotify or Apple Music? Choices like this shouldn’t be difficult, but yet I stand amongst a smorgasbord of user hostile pros & cons that really shouldn’t exist.

The Vinyl Deception: Records Are Not As Big As You Think

Vinyl has risen from the dead over the last nine years, under the guise of superior audio quality and the full package of liner notes. This trend has led to the likes of Sony and Panasonic introducing record players recently.

Wired magazine has even gone on to write about how vinyl records won CES 2016 and while this is true, I believe we're giving records a lot more credit than they're due.

New Rising Media Christmas Gift Guide: Music

The standard music recommended in Christmas gift guides across the globe can get rather dire. A selection of albums from the most commercialised of "talent," which quickly loses all musical value in a storm of stereotypical song structure and torrenting. With that in mind, we've counted down the Top 25 albums of this year, all of which will make a great present in both physical or downloaded form.

The 'Mastered For iTunes' Deception

People speak of not noticing the difference in audio between music downloads and physical copies, whereas chances are they have. In a crystallising moment, there will always be that tiny split-second noise of digitisation, or the compromised sound-levellings of an alternate bit rate, courtesy of an encoder. It's that unavoidable glitch in the song that you can't un-hear when it is heard, and builds a somewhat undefinable character around the song.

Infographic of the day: iPod and iTunes Timeline

It's true what is said, the transforming of data into presentation can be done to a point that it begins to look like art. This is a prime example of this. Displaying the key items in the timeline of the iPod hardware and the iTunes software which integrated with it. A clock chart iconifies all the key time landmarks, along with a few key facts about downloads and sales at the bottom. An ideal output of the numbers from the Steve Jobs era of Apple products. Thanks Filip Chudzinski!